Highland Church Podcast

Its Easter Sunday! So, we talked about the resurrection of Jesus. What else is there? Well, it turns out Jesus’ resurrection means that we can be united to him (Romans 6:5).

On the Sunday before Easter its right to focus on Jesus’ life and his death on the cross. One of the stories that best helps us understand the significance of the cross is the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22.

David Jackson will teach part 1 from a new series called Lessons from Moses.

Wilson McCoy from the College Hills Church of Christ in Lebanon TN joins us today for our message. John presents the gospel of Jesus as an act of new creation in our world. His entrance is good news because Jesus comes as light for all people to follow. As disciples to the light of Jesus today, what might it look like for us to follow him in our world? In this sermon we will explore one key implication for our discipleship to Jesus.

Today's sermon is from Genesis 21:1-7 and Romans 4:1-5. Because Abraham and Sarah had Faith, God was gracious and gave them Isaac. So is Faith a precondition for blessings from God? Is grace earned with faith? We will see what Paul has to say about this in Romans.

What is the thing you are waiting on? Or let me put it this way: How would you finish this sentence: I need the Lord and ______________. How would you fill in that blank? Maybe its something at work. Something at home. Something in your personal life. If you could just have that one thing in addition to the Lord, that would be enough. Let's look at Genesis 15-17 and see how Abraham would answer that question.

Our lesson today comes from Jim Harbin who has partnered with Highland for over 24 years to share the gospel in the Raleigh Community in North Memphis. Jim will look at 1 Corinthians 3:6-11 and will show how God’s plans were fulfilled in our work together. The Sovereignty of God was at work to make the work grow. We remain coworkers in the kingdom to this day. We give God the praise for this continued work.

The promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12 is the first that the bible itself labels the Gospel. That means that this passage shapes everything that follows it, from Old Testament to New Testament, to our church today, and to your daily life, and to eternity. The gospel here is the driving force for everything. Our response—our faith—is a critical part of the Gospel.

Today, we’re launching My Part, God’s Plan. We’re emphasizing serving through the church. And we need every person that attends Highland to find their part here. We are on a mission together, and "each one of you is a part of it."

Why doesn’t God like people to work together? Live together? People decide to live together and build something awesome, and God doesn’t like it. Changes all their languages so they can’t talk to each other. Why doesn’t God like teamwork and building great things? That’s a bad reading on the story of the Tower of Babel. And we know that because of what happens later in the Bible in Acts. But lets dig in a little bit more and figure what’s actually happening here in Genesis.

Today's lesson is the story of Noah. Let's be honest for a second, this is a story that challenges the faith of a lot of people. What kind of God would do this? Flood the world, and as he says, “put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am going to destroy both them and the earth” (Gen 6:13) What kind of God would do that? Doesn’t seem right? But in this story we see that God will make things right and evil will not be forgotten. We also learn that God will remember me and I will not be forgotten much like Noah.

Anybody who has boys cannot afford to ignore this story. Maybe you can if you have daughters. But when you have all boys, every time you send them upstairs to play, you say—Don’t Kill each other…because of Cain and Abel. This story of Cain and Abel is really about all of us. Now this story is a little harder to see ourselves in, at least at first, because most of us don’t kill our siblings. Even when they deserve it, and we really want to. But let me show you something about this story that’s easy to miss, and may hit a little closer to home. I know it does for me.

When we don’t know the truth, we do some unfortunate things. Unfortunate is one thing. But harmful, destructive, hurtful? Most of us have not only seen someone do those things, we’ve done ‘em too. What I want you to see today is that those choices are connected in the very same way to our grasp on truth. This is why its so good for us to go back to the beginning of the story, the first chapters of Genesis. What we are after is truth. So, we go back to its source.

You ever had that moment: This… this is the good life. Don’t you want more moments like that? We all do. What actually makes for a good life? That question may be one of the best ways to approach the first chapters of the Bible in Genesis 1-2. In these chapters I think we can find three things that help us to have the Good Life.

A blessing is a sacred thing. The kind of blessing I’m talking about, the kind of blessing the people of God give to one another and even to others, is different. That kind of blessing is sacred because its rooted in God’s blessing, for God’s purposes, and by God’s power. Today we are blessing the Oikos church. And we are simply joining, ratifying that divine blessing today, as we bless and send them.

We live in a time where folks say that everyone deserves to be treated well. And we agree. That seems right. But then people turn out to not be that great, and treating them well… gets harder. The image of God is this thing in us that sticks, no matter what. Its that inherent dignity that every person has no matter what. And that’s what should determine how I treat them.

Today we are starting a series on the book of Genesis—the first book in your bible. But that kind of under-sells what we hope this series is really about. Its about the bigger story that we are part of. One that, as we will see, is good. The one we hope you’ll lose yourself in. To tell that bigger story you have to go back to the start.

Over a year ago we started a series in the book of Mark. We figured it was good time to ask the question we started with again—what is the good news? We think it's this: Jesus is Christ, our King. He is from God, of God, for us. He sees. He provides. He forgives. He frees. Jesus is Christ, our King. And because of this we should listen to Him. This is indeed, good news.

At Christmas, we think about the beginning of the good news, the Jesus story. But in our series I’m at the end of the story. But you might be surprised at how the beginning and end are tied together. We live in a world of bad news, and unending loss, much of it ambiguous. And yet the promise of this story, is that in this man is what everyone longs for most—great joy. * Note- we lost power during the recording of this sermon so the quality of this audio suffers during that time.

This class is the second lesson in a two part series on the Birth of Jesus. Gary will be discussing the second chapter of Luke.